by Meena Ganesan

Listen to the story!

5:30am : Alarm clock sounds; time to wake up.

5:32am : Brush teeth; stumble into shower.

5:52am : Find outfit that seems to work; put hair in bun, poke eyes with contacts, quickly apply some eye shadow, and think of a way to make the bags under eyes disappear.

6:10am : Muster up some energy to finish physics and read AP Lang packet for discussion.

7:10am : Run out the door and into the car, hoping all the while that today is a "snow day."   On the way to school, stop for coffee at Holiday gas station.   89 cents makes it worthwhile.

7:25am : Sprint into school for a day of endless thinking: Pre-Calc, Physics, and AP Lang.

11:21am : Finally, lunch.   But wait, today is Wednesday.   First, there's a Z-Club community service meeting, then a conference with mentorship coordinator, and lastly a few minutes to study for the AP Euro Quiz.

12:01 : Lunch ends, AP Euro begins, AP Art History follows.

2:00pm : School is over, but the day isn't. Spend an hour at debate, leave and quickly change in the car for a case at Anchorage Youth Court, and then run to City Hall for a meeting of the Mayor's Youth Advisory Commission.   Get in the car once more for a trip to the Frontier Building where a Spirit of Youth Teen Action Council Meeting will take place.

7:30pm : Drive home and grab something to eat.

8pm : It's Wednesday, time for a little of the WB's "One Tree Hill."

9pm : Book crashing: homework in all classes, plus write an article for the Anchorage Daily News's Perfect World and work on that American Legion Oratorical Speech.   Don't forget, the SATs are in a week.   Where are those vocab word flashcards?

2am : Fall asleep on book bag. Three and a half hours of deep sounding zs.   Not bad.

Sounds stressful, doesn't?   That, my friends, is a typical high-schooler's day.   Well, maybe not a typical high-schooler, but definitely one that is involved.         

Our society, today, is so competitive that it puts pressure on all teens alike.   Whatever happened to the days when people learned because they like learning...the days when teachers taught because they liked teaching?   Whatever happened to friends having each others' backs, and not being so competitive that they would turn on them, instead of help them?   Whatever happened to the world where stress and anxiety were strangers to people under the age of 20?   Where did that world go?

I suppose it went with the world that cared about values and morals, world peace, solving world hunger, letting kids be kids and adults be adults.   The one that wasn't in such a rush, the one that took time to smell the roses and absorb the sunset.   It went with that world.

The funny thing is: I think this life in this country is stressful, but what if I was in a third-world country and I had to think about where my food was coming from.

I guess stress is apart of every human being's life—whether you are a languishing Alaskan high-schooler or a starving child in Ireland.

Being stressed is inevitable.   It is something that cannot be avoided, only resolved.